Social Media & Tech News

Is it Instagram-worthy? Whether it’s lunch, the gym, or the beach, that’s the question everyone is asking these days. Some even go as far as to buy automatic Instagram likes.

Despite getting a later start in the social media game than Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, Instagram has made one heck of a splash in the industry. Today, Instagram is one of the most popular and widely used social media platforms, taking the photo sharing app from 0-60 in Ferrari-like fashion.

With 500+ million active users accessing the app daily, the opportunities are endless for businesses, influencers, and well, just about anyone. However, to stay on your game and a step ahead, you need to understand some important Instagram stats.

Knowing who’s on Instagram and how they use the platform can help you craft an effective Instagram marketing strategy. Check out the 13 eye-opening stats below to set yourself up for Instagram success in 2020 and beyond.

1. Instagram has over a billion active users.

With this figure firmly in hand, Instagram ranks third in popularity amongst social media networks. It trails only Facebook with its two billion monthly active users and YouTube with 1.9 billion.

With one billion active users, this means there’s at least 500 million people scrolling through their IG feeds each and every day. That’s a huge audience to get in front of.

2. Instagram is used by 64 percent of people under 30.

Understanding Instagram’s demographics can help you craft a more effective social media strategy. Instagram’s userbase is growing, but it’s unquestionably most popular with younger demographics. If your brand is targeting Millennials and Gen Zers, much of your marketing efforts should be focused on Instagram.

3. Instagram accounts for 1/4 of Facebook’s ad revenue.

Owned by Facebook, Instagram’s advertising is entirely run through Facebook’s Ads Manager. This means, all revenue generated by Instagram stays under the umbrella of its parent company, Facebook.

4. 80 percent of Instagram users follow a business.

Still on the fence about whether or not social media marketing actually works? If so, this stat will make you jump right off. It’s clear, Instagram users are following businesses, so if you develop a presence on the platform, your audience will follow you.

On top of this stat, Instagram business profiles are visited over 200 million times each day. Still on the fence? Didn’t think so.

5. Over two million businesses and influencers advertise on Instagram each month.

When you scroll through your Instagram feed, you’ll notice that every third or fourth photo is “Sponsored.” You’ll also notice Stories ads displayed when watching the Stories of the IG users you follow.

What does this mean? Instagram is a great place to reach your audience through both paid and organic means.

6. The best times to post on Instagram are 10 a.m.–3 p.m. Tuesday-Friday.

While the best time for a brand to publish social media posts largely depends on their own unique audience and their engagement with them, the data with Instagram is pretty compelling.

According to several studies, the best time to post on Instagram is 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, with the peak times being Wednesday and Friday at 11 a.m. Knowing these times can help you make timely posts to generate more likes and a higher level of engagement.

7. Image posts receive 38 percent less engagement than video posts.

Not sure whether to posts an image or a video? This stat can help. If you want to boost your Instagram engagement, you need to think outside the box and post something other than a photo or carousel.

Despite still being rather rare compared to image posts, video posts also receive over twice the number of comments. Since engagement is the single most important social media metric, using video in your IG feed is definitely worth giving a try.

8. Instagram users upload over 100 million images every day.

Yes, you read that right. Instagram users upload over 100 million images each and every day. People are using Instagram to tell their life story, and brands are using it to tell the story of their brands. You need to share your story or the story of your brand too.

9. 1/3 of the most viewed Instagram Stories come from businesses.

Instagram Stories was launched in 2016, and since then, it now has half a billion daily active users. Stories can be used a number of ways to increase your brand’s engagement and connection with your audience.

Since 1/3 of the most popular Stories come from businesses, it’s clear audiences are engaging with brands via their Story content.

10. 50 percent of businesses on Instagram post at least one Story each month.

Half of businesses on Instagram create Story content every month, proving Stories are for much more than users sharing their daily lives with friends. Need inspiration? There are tons of Story ideas out there to help inspire you to create engaging Instagram Stories for your brand.

11. More Millennials consume Stories on Instagram than they do on Facebook and Snaphat.

Although Snapchat created the idea for Stories years before Instagram, it has already passed Snapchat in usership. In fact, 68 percent of Millennials consume Instagram Stories, while only 48 and 44 percent consume Stories on Snapchat and Facebook respectively.

Since these Millennials likely follow and interact with brands on Instagram, they’re likely engaging with these brands’ Stories as well. Utilizing Stories and all of the platform’s other features will only result in positive traction for your brand.

12. Instagram users spend nearly an hour a day on the platform.

Well, the average user spends 53 minutes a day on the platform to be exact. This is a huge deal. That’s nearly an hour a day spent scrolling through feeds and photos, watching Stories, and interacting with other accounts.

Utilizing this popular platform for your brand will allow you to be seen by more people, attract more customers, create a loyal following, and ultimately, grow your business.

13. Instagram Live is used by over 100 million Instagrammers each day.

Instagram Stories videos are restricted to 15 seconds in length, which isn’t much time to dive deep into topics. Instagram Live, however, lets users livestream content, and audiences are gobbling it up.

In fact, over 100 million Instagrammers watch or record live video on the platform every day, making Instagram Live a great tool to directly connect and interact with your audience.

Ready to turn these stats into a rock-solid Instagram marketing strategy? Instagram has become one incredibly powerful marketing tool for brands looking to boost their visibility, engagement, and reach.

We hope these 13 eye-opening stats for 2020 have shed some insight on the importance of investing in Instagram and provided you with plenty of ideas on how to exploit the platform for all it’s worth.

Historically, candidates for office have brushed aside questions about the legalization of cannabis from advocates and activists. Even in states where public opinion polling has long indicated widespread support for legalization — California, for example – politicians have a long track record of dismissiveness and condescension.

When asked about the tax and regulation of marijuana products, then-Attorney General Kamala Harris laughed about the issue and then said her opponent, who had vocalized support for legalization, was “entitled to his opinion”. That was in 2014 – only five years ago. But in that short time, mounting evidence of the benefits of cannabis products, including CBD, has mounted, and public opinion has swung even further toward legalization.

Pharmaceutical Drugs Have Wrecked Lives

47,000 Americans died in 2017 of opioid overdoses. Many more are addicted. Entire communities in rural America have been devastated by addiction and death.

When OxyContin, a powerful opiate narcotic marketed as a long-term pain management treatment, was introduced to the market in 1997, the company pushing the product on patients did little to warn of the devastating health effects.

These same pharmaceutical giants have pumped billions of dollars into the political process through direct contributions, contributions to political action committees, and various lobbying schemes to deregulate themselves and – most importantly for CBD proponents – to keep natural remedies illegal.

The Scheduling Mess

When the federal schedules for banned substances were introduced in 1971, marijuana was inexplicably listed in the same category as heroin and ecstasy. These Schedule 1 drugs are considered the most “dangerous” with the highest potential for abuse – which science has proven conclusively is nonsense in the case of marijuana.

The effect is that legitimate medicine like authentic CBD oil, which does not even produce any “high”, is somehow considered as dangerous as heroin. The reality is that heroin claims tens of thousands of American lives each year and not a single person in the history of the world has ever overdosed on marijuana.

The Economic Argument

Politicians running for office and pundits on TV and radio spend significant time talking about the economy and the need for high-quality jobs. Manufacturing has been particularly devastated in the last 40 years as multinational corporations have moved their production facilities to places like Mexico and China where cheap labor is plentiful and labor protections are non-existent.

CBD oil has huge upsides as the brand-new industry explodes. With billions of new wealth generation on the line, American firms could be the pioneers in the field if the federal government lifted its burdensome regulations which currently make navigating the CBD business creation a nightmare scenario.

States’ Rights

American politics has long been dominated by factions that support the nearly autonomous function of the states and disavow the “overreach” of the federal government. This drama has played out in recent years in the marijuana fiasco, as federal and state laws often clash.

In the case of CBD, which offers so much in the way of economic boom and promotion of health, the argument of states’ rights to determine the legality for themselves without interference from federal agencies like the FDA and DEA could not be stronger.

Conclusion

The important economic and cultural questions raised by the current legal status CBD oil makes this topic ripe for exploitation by politicians and interest groups. Moral or practical arguments opposing CBD oil are nearly impossible to make for reasons listed in this article, and a win on the CBD question could spe[l future success for full-on marijuana legalization and other related social victories moving forward.

When Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites first hit the scene, people were transfixed, and the fascination has not gone away. While there have been some shifts in the social media landscape, the population of Facebook users remains larger than the population of entire countries, and everyone from celebrities to presidents are sharing their opinions 280 characters at a time.

If you are one of the legions of social media users, you may have noticed how much of your life is being lived online. And while social media sites allow people to connect to one another in new and interesting ways, social media addiction can actually harm relationships.

If you are spending more time than you would like on social media, it may be time to do something about it. Here are some simple and effective steps you can take to take back control of your life and break your social media addiction.

Delete Social Media Apps from Your Devices

If you are spending more time with your Facebook friends than your real life ones, the smartphone in your pocket could be to blame. It is easy to spend hours scrolling through your Facebook feed or checking your Twitter messages when those things are as close as your phone screen.

It is much harder to sustain a social media addiction when you are offline for much of the day. So do yourself a favor and delete those social media apps from your phone. You can always catch up on the feeds when you get home.

Turn Off Notifications

If you cannot bear to delete Facebook, Twitter and other social media apps from your phone, at least turn off your notifications. Those social media notifications only feed your addiction, and they can get pretty intrusive if you let them.

You can still check your social media sites, but try to limit how much time you spend. If anything truly earth shattering happens, you will hear about it from the people in your real world network of friends, without the use of social media.

Explore the Real World

Social media is a wonderful supplement to the real world, but for many people it has become a replacement. If you find yourself spending all your time on social media, it is time to explore the world around you instead.

Take up a new hobby. Call an old friend on the telephone. Meet some colleagues for lunch. Whatever you do, spending more time in the pursuit of real world activities is one of the best ways to break a social media addiction.

Once you have that app on your phone, computer and other devices, you can work to reduce your social media usage. It may be tough in the beginning, but over time you can reduce your social media usage and finally break your addiction.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media sites have allowed people to connect across borders and enabled old friends to reunite across the years. At the same time, these sites have fostered some serious addictions, actually interfering with real world activities. If you want to enjoy the positive things social media has to offer while still avoiding the negatives, the tips listed above can help you break your addiction, so you can put your usage into perspective.

Social media sites like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram have drastically changed the way teens socialize, communicate, and develop and maintain friendships. While the digital world affords many benefits for the youth of today, it also has risks. One of those risks seems to be depression. Most parents have realized the mental distress of cyber bullying, but many may not be aware that exclusions, unrealistic comparisons, lack of responses to posts, lack of online followers/friends, and such may result in teen depression.

Teen Depression Is Rising

From 2005 to 2014, research showed that the prevalence of adolescent depressive episodes increased from 8.7% to 11.3%. With similar studies confirming the rise in overall teen depression, many have started to look at the whys and are exploring how social media consumption contributes to it.

Teen Social Networking Is Rising

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, 22% of teens are logging into Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and other social media sites at least 10 times per day. They also found that 75% of teens now own smartphones.

What Role Does Social Media Have In Teen Depression?

Analysts and psychologists are using terms like “ Facebook depression” and “Facebook envy” to describe the rapidly growing populace of social media users reporting that social media is causing them mental distress.

Interactions on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc can create a portal for harsh judgments, comparisons, self-esteem destruction, bullying, and attention-seeking. After all, it’s much easier to make critical statements to a screen that can’t fight back. It’s easy to be your own harshest critic and make comparisons when your feed is full of “friends” who may be prettier, smarter, more successful, or happier than you. And, it’s easy to have a negative self-esteem when posts are made in an effort to receive caring responses and end up sitting around with no comments or likes. In fact, many teens are turning to sites like buylikes.net, which offers automatic Instagram likes, out of desperation for attention or the perception of popularity.

One under realized social media problem causing mental distress is miscommunication. In real life, conversations depend on non-verbal communication, such as mannerisms and facial expressions, just as heavily as the words being spoken to convey a message, opinion, or emotion. Social media doesn’t afford such nonverbal cues. Between it being a singular communication and the disjointed ‘text language’ often used, miscommunication is a huge issue.

So how are these issues impacting teens?

Researchers at the University of Essex and University College London recently conducted a study that found girls using social media sites like Instagram were ten times more likely to suffer emotional issues as they transition into teenagers, such as unhappiness with friends, school, and their own body image. Happiness scores for the study group (girls between 10 and 15-years-old) dropped from 36.9 to 33.3.

Another report by UK’s Royal Society for Public Health surveyed 1500 individuals ranging in age from 14 to 24 and found that YouTube had the least negative impact and Instagram, Facebook, SnapChat, and Twitter had the greatest negative impact on mental health.

As a parent or caretaker, the knee jerk response is to delete all social media apps and ban teens from using them. Experts dissuade parents from the avoidance and ban approach. Teens often use social media to gain support, expand knowledge, and as a tool to seek help. Instead, it’s often recommended that parents take the time to monitor how teens use social media and understand how and what to watch out for in teens.

Symptoms Of Depression

A depressive episode is sadness and/or disinterest that deviates from normal for at least two weeks. Symptoms to watch out for in teens include:

Irritability

Sadness

Disinterest in normal likes

Changes in friends

Spending significantly more or less time on social media

Hopelessness

Eating and weight changes

Fatigue

Insomnia

Suicidal thoughts or actions

Isolation

Promiscuous, reckless, or dangerous behaviors

Difficulties in school and/or attendance of school

New physical complaints, such as headaches

Instagram Feed May Provide Clues To Mental Health

Fortune Magazine recently published a study of Instagram users by researchers at Harvard University and The University of Vermont. The study surveyed 166 individuals with Instagram accounts. In all, the researchers looked at almost 44,000 photos. A standardized clinical depression survey was given in regards to social media habits and history of depression as it related to their Instagram feeds.

Depressed user’s tended to post darker and more grey pictures with increased hue and decreased color saturation and brightness. The depressed subjects more frequently used Instagram filters, especially Inkwell. They posted more frequently and were more apt to post face-only photos, but had less number of faces within each photo than the non-depressed subjects.

Instagram has become the most popular photo sharing app on the planet. It gives users the opportunity to share photos of themselves and their lives with a potentially worldwide audience. It also offers individuals who post regularly and build a substantial following to become influencers.

An influencer can be described as anyone whose posts influence the decisions of people who follow them. For example, by wearing a piece of clothing in a photo, it may lead their followers to go out and buy a similar item. If they go to watch a certain film at the cinema, this may also lead their followers to want to watch the same film with their friends.

But how does someone become an influencer on Instagram? There is no single answer to this question, as each influencer has often built their following in different ways and by adopting different strategies. For example, some influencers have built a following solely because they have appeared on a television show or in a movie and so people who have seen the show or film want to follow them. Others have built a following based on the interesting or beautiful photos they have posted.

However, all those who have built up large followings on the platform do share some things in common. These include posting regular photos to keep people interested and often responding directly to the messages of people who are following them. This creates a personal connection between the influencer and those who are following them and increases the chances that they will encourage their friends to also follow them.

Other ways in which a large following can be built on Instagram are by focusing on a niche and attracting people who may be interested in receiving photographic updates in that area. For example, if you are a football fan and regularly go to matches you could document it on Instagram sharing photos from before and after the game as well as of the players and fans. You could also start following others in the hope that they will follow you back. You could also comment on their posts to encourage them to follow you.

Instagram is a hugely popular platform which has encouraged users to share photos to an extent which they would not have done previously. It has opened new opportunities for those who wish to promote their brand or themselves to the world.